2010 Appellate courhouse Holocaust Memorial

The Memorial to Victims of the Injustice of the Holocaust in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

is a sculpture by

Harriet Feigenbaum Harriet Feigenbaum (born 1939) is an American ecofeminist artist and sculptor. Many of her works are publicly displayed or in collections in New York. Her later work focused on reclamation projects, often of old mining cites, in Pennsylvania. Ro ...

, on the side of the

Appellate Division Courthouse of New York State The Appellate Division Courthouse of New York State, First Department (also known as Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of the State of New York) is a historic court house located at 35 East 25th Street at the corner of Madison Avenue, acro ...

, at

Madison Avenue Madison Avenue is a north-south avenue in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, United States, that carries northbound one-way traffic. It runs from Madison Square (at 23rd Street) to meet the southbound Harlem River Drive at 142nd Stre ...

and 25th Street in

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

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Background

Presiding Justice Francis T. Murphy, and Clerk of the Court Harold J. Reynolds conceived the idea of creating a Holocaust memorial monument at the Appellate Division courthouse. Several members of the court were concerned by what they viewed as an increasing indifference to injustice, which could undermine the court system. The justices believed a Holocaust memorial could symbolize these concerns, and a private committee of lawyers raised $200,000 in funding.Talk of the Town, ''New Yorker'', May 21, 1990. Ms. Feigenbaum won the 1988 competition to design the memorial, with a proposal to feature a replica of an aerial

photograph A photograph (also known as a photo, image, or picture) is an image created by light falling on a photosensitive surface, usually photographic film or an electronic image sensor, such as a CCD or a CMOS chip. Most photographs are now create ...

of the

Auschwitz concentration camp Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It con ...

taken by American planes as they bombed German oil factories nearby on August 25, 1944.

Sculpture

The sculpture is titled ''Memorial to Victims of the Injustice of the Holocaust''. The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs describes it as "a six-sided half column rising 27 feet above its base. The five-sided concave base extends one story below ground level, the overall height of the Memorial being 38 feet. Carvings of flames along the length of the column recall the flames of the gas chambers at Auschwitz. They appear to blow in the direction of the courthouse as if to threaten the symbol of Justice. A relief of an aerial view of the main camp at Auschwitz is carved into the base at eye level...On the base under the relief is a giant flame extending below ground level as a final reminder of Crematorium 1 at Auschwitz." The words "Indifference to Injustice is the Gate to Hell" are engraved around the image. Justice Murphy and Mr. Reynolds wrote the inscription. Feigenbaum's carving noted five of the specific points within the Auschwitz camp that were visible in the original

: Torture Chamber dentified_in_the_photograph_as_Block_11.html" ;"title="Block_11.html" ;"title="dentified in the photograph as Block 11">dentified in the photograph as Block 11">Block_11.html" ;"title="dentified in the photograph as Block 11">dentified in the photograph as Block 11 Execution Wall, Gas Chamber and Crematorium 1, Commandant's House. Feingenbaum was born in the United States in 1939 and lost relatives in the Holocaust. In a 1990 interview with the ''New Yorker'', she described the sensitivity of creating the artwork as someone who had never visited Auschwitz, saying “Being a Jew alive in this time, when there are still Holocaust survivors, makes Holocaust art hard to do.” Explaining that while she could have visited Auschwitz as part of her preparation, she decided against it. "This work is made by someone who didn't live through it - I had to keep the truth of that. Then I saw an aerial photograph of the camp from 1944, reproduced in the ''Times'', and I decided to use it as a plan for the relief. There's a certain mystery about it; the aerial view gives it a certain vagueness. If I had gone there, and looked at the camp as it is today, I'd be too literal, and some of the mystery would be gone."

Relevance of Aerial Photograph to Auschwitz Bombing Debate

The photo was first shared with the public in 1979, as part of a report released by two Central Intelligence Agency analysts who said they used new technology and eyewitness accounts to interpret photos taken in 1944. The photos were taken as part of reconnaissance and bombing by the Allied forces of the I.G. Farben petro-chemical plant, located less than 5 miles from the Auschwitz camp."Bombing." Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum. Accessed November 4, 2023. https://www.auschwitz.org/en/press/mini-dictionary/#Bombing The photos are significant because of the Auschwitz bombing debate as they demonstrate that U.S. planes had the ability to bomb the death camp. The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs website for the memorial indicates, "by the selection of this photograph, the artist is saying that the Allies must have known of the camp and they took no action."

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Holocaust Memorial Sculpture, New York City 1990 sculptures Holocaust commemoration Marble sculptures in New York City Outdoor sculptures in Manhattan